The ever-increasing use of the Internet has led to an increase in the cybersecurity threats, and it asks for greater protection of websites. If you are running a business online or you have a business website, you may have heard about having an extra ‘s’ to ‘http’. What difference does it make by switching from ‘http’ to ‘https’? Google insists on having a secure website, and in the process released Chrome version 68, which treats all ‘http’ websites as unsecure and unsafe. With the right SSL certificate, you can switch to ‘https’ and ensure that your website is encrypted and secure.
As a business owner, you know that your website should figure on the leading search engine pages to attract more traffic. If your website is not safe to access, it won’t figure on the search list. By purchasing an SSL certificate, you can have greater security to your website. With it, you also ensure that the users’ information on your website or ecommerce store is protected in three layers such as encryption, data integrity and authentication.
For a business, ‘https’ is better, for it can help improve SEO and increase search engine rankings. When the users see an ‘s’ in ‘https’ when typing the web address on the URL space bar, they know that the site is safe and trustable. With the letter ‘s’, you ensure that your website has an SSL certificate and can be accessed safely without any information being stolen.
What is an SSL certificate?
If you want your ecommerce website to look legitimate, reliable and trustworthy, you should get an SSL certificate. What is so good about an SSL certificate? If you are not having it, your visitors are warned that your website is not secure.
The term SSL looks technical, but actually it is not. It is something like a bit of code to enable encryption on your web server, which helps keep all the online communications encrypted and secure. In other words, it is like sending your information in a sealed envelope to avoid anyone reading it.
An SSL is short for a ‘Secure Socket Layer’, which is a type of encryption technology that makes sure that the communication between the users’ web browser and web server is secure. An SSL certificate is a digital certificate, which validates the identity of an online store or website and declares that only protected or encrypted data is sent by employing the SSL technology.
If you are running an ecommerce store, you need to ensure that customer sensitive information like the username, passwords, credit or debit card numbers, emails, etc., are fully protected through SSL certification. This will enable your prospective customers to stay on your website and shop and pay without any fear of someone stealing the information.
An SSL certificate helps you have your data encrypted through asymmetric cryptography algorithm before they are transmitted over the Internet. You need to install the certificate on your server to gain the advantage of SSL technology. How do your customers know that your store is protected? When you install an SSL certificate, your website address will have a padlock icon on the left-hand side, which shows your website is secure, safe and reliable.
Other than these, your website gains several other benefits by having an SSL certificate. They are:
- Strong validation process to prevent phishing attacks
You have to go through a validation process to acquire an SSL certificate from the Certificate Authority. You can get it free if you are a startup or a small business, which is going to launch a website. Choose a web hosting provider and subscribe for a suitable hosting plan. If you don’t expect a lot of visitors to your website, you can go for shared hosting plan, or else, you should choose dedicated hosting. All hosting plans offer free SSL certificates and other freebies. You can check and sign up for a suitable plan.
An SSL certificate affirms your integrity via trust indicators. Moreover, it validates your website’s authenticity and prevents any phishing attacks.
- Helps have a safe and secure website
One of the most important benefits of buying SSL certificates is you protect your site and all the information in it. By having it installed, you can secure any highly sensitive information your customer sends to the server. SSL technology uses the most advanced 256-bit encryption algorithm to safeguard your website from malicious intruders. Therefore, your customers can safely shop and make payments on your online store.
- Helps establish your credibility and identity
Most visitors don’t check the authenticity of a website. Nevertheless, it is difficult to know whether a particular website is genuine and safe. There are several instances of people complaining about losing money. In most cases, people have fallen prey to the hackers, who portrayed themselves as from a bank or financial institution and stole confidential information.
The Australian Cyber Security Centre has warned the online users in Australia about online scams and have asked them to learn to protect themselves. One of the advice given to the users is to visit only authentic sites, which offers high-level protection to their personal information.
When you buy an SSL certificate from a reliable provider in Australia, you tend to have a server certificate, which is an additional protection. With this certificate, you can have your customers check it and ensure that the website they visit is genuine and belongs to you.
- You can accept payments
If you are running an ecommerce store and based in Australia, you need to get SSL certification for receiving card payments. According to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard or PCI DSS, it is one of the requirements for an online store to have an adequate encryption system to protect customers’ credit card details. You can have the SSL certificate from the trusted provider, who is also checked by the PCI DSS for the authenticity.
Moreover, the PCI DSS also ensures whether the online store is using the right encryption strength, which should be of minimum 128-bit. Nonetheless, there are providers offering SSL certificates with 256-bit encryption for greater website protection.
With an SSL certificate at an affordable price, you can not only protect your website but also increase traffic, which can result in better conversion rates.
